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Italian president calls for deeper integration

Giorgio Napolitano, Italy’s octogenarian president, was received at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday (4 February) with all the pomp the institution could muster, starting with a solemn ceremony in the Parliament’s forecourt at which the Italian and European anthems were played by a military band. The EU has no army, so a band from the Eurocorps, a rapid-reaction force from several member states that is based in Strasbourg, performed the task. According to the Parliament’s protocol, this was the first time that a dignitary had been so received.

It was “a testimony to a long political career at the service of Italy and Europe”, said a spokesman for Martin Schulz, the Parliament’s president. Schulz had requested the honour because he considered Napolitano to be “one of the greatest living European statesmen”. In his introduction, Schulz put Napolitano on a level with other “great Europeans” from Italy such as Alcide De Gasperi and Altiero Spinelli.

Boos and jeers

A handful of MEPs from the Eurosceptic, separatist Lega Nord had a different take on their president; they jeered during his speech and held up placards that read: “Basta euro” (‘enough of the euro’). What had provoked the Lega MEPs was Napolitano’s warning that mounting Euroscepticism might destroy the EU. He said that worsening economic prospects were being exploited by extremists who wanted democracy to fail.

“It is quite obvious that the main source of disenchantment, lack of trust and rejection of the European construction and what the institutions are doing lies in the deteriorating living conditions and social status which is currently affecting the population in most EU member states and the eurozone,” he said.

Napolitano said that voters were confronted with “a misleading choice between tired, defensive rhetoric in a Europe that has shown major shortcomings as it has moved towards integration, and, on the other hand, destructive agitation against the euro and against the Union”.

Back in Italy, Napolitano faces an impeachment campaign from the 5-Star movement of Beppe Grillo, which accuses him of being biased in favour of Italy’s established parties.

Hannes Swoboda, leader of the centre-left Socialists and Democrats in the Parliament, accused Grillo of “undermining democracy”, and drew parallels with the rise of fascism in 1920s and 1930s Europe. “The last time democracy failed in Europe, it started with attacks on people and politicians and that is what is happening now and that is destroying our democratic values,” Swoboda said.

Napolitano was the first president of Italy to be re-elected to a second term, in April 2013, after the country’s squabbling parties failed to find any other acceptable candidate.